gooood team interviews creative individuals under 35 years old from all over the world, some are pioneering founders, some are clients, some are ordinary practitioners. gooood is trying to record the authentic living and working states of this era. Your recommendations and suggestions are appreciated!gooood Under 35 NO.23 introduces Alfie Koetter, who is the founder of Medium Office, founding editor of Project and teacher at the University of Southern California.

I was raised by two architects, which, as a child, seemed like a totally normal thing; I thought everybody had models of buildings and prints of the Nolli map in their houses. In retrospect, I realize how strange it actually was. Early exposure to models, for instance, conditioned my understanding of scale and representation: models were no different than buildings; they were just smaller and made out of different materials; the bigger they got the more complex they became until you ended up with something that people called a building, but in my mind was just a big model made out of more expensive materials.

I didn’t find this problem of scale and representation interesting when I was younger. I took it – and much of architecture, for that matter – for granted. I was too close to be able to properly see anything. For that reason, I didn’t study architecture in college. It was, in my mind, a profession like any other; and because it was what my parents did, it was the last thing I wanted to do.

In distancing myself from architecture I paradoxically brought myself closer to it. I was able to see it as something other than just a profession. I could see it as a discipline. I was able to recognize that those problems of scale and representation that I took for granted when I was younger could in fact be grounds for intellectual pursuit, rather than simply matters of fact.

That said, I am not sure if I can declaratively say that I have chosen to be an architect. Architecture is simply a productive medium through which I can work, and at the moment, it is the primary medium through which I work. That could change though.

I remember when I was younger being told about how Michael Graves was so obsessed with architecture that he couldn’t sleep at night; that he would wait until his partner fell asleep and then get out of bed and keep working because his commitment to architecture was So all-consuming. With that in mind, I can’t help but interpret the subtext to this question to be“to what extent is architecture your life？”

“建筑不是我的生命，它绝对是其中的一部分，但不是全部。”

“Architecture isn’t my life. It’s definitely a part of it, but it’s not an all-consuming.”

Given the sorts of stories – myths really – that we hear about architects like Graves, there is a cult-like sense of obligation to say that architecture is your life in total; any other answer would be to undercut your commitment to the discipline and consequently your integrity as an architect. At the very least, you feel compelled to say that your other interests are architecture-adjacent, something with sufficient intellectual pedigree like art or film (not to be confused with movies).

I would love to be able to give that sort of answer. It would be great if architecture was all I could think about; it would mean that I was singularly focused on one thing all the time. I would be so much more productive. But architecture isn’t my life. It’s definitely a part of it, but it’s not an all-consuming, I-don’ t-sleep-at-night part of it.

I probably think about basketball more than | think about architecture, to be honest, and not in some sort of intellectual way that has any architectural implications. I just love to watch basketball. I love how one good player can change an entire game, or even an entire season. I love how many international players there are in the NBA. I love that it is about as fast a sport as you can play without it becoming outright violent. Ball is life。

▼Kiosk 001展开图纸，extended drawing of Kiosk 001

“我不认为从前那种师长与学徒的模式仍存在于今日。”

“I don’t think the teacher-disciple model even exists today in the way that it once did.”

3. 你毕业后的第一份工作是什么？它对你现在的事业有什么影响？ What’s your first job after graduation? How did that first job lead you to your current career?

My first job out of school was working for Kohn Pedersen Fox in New York. I’m not sure that working for KPF had any impact on my career, beyond the fact that I stopped working there and went on to do other things.

I think that there is a vestigial narrative that we hold on to as architects that the first job you have will be the most important job you will ever have, that it will somehow lay the groundwork for the type or architect that you become.

This narrative is built on an assumption that the relationship between an employer and an employee is like that of a teacher and a disciple, in which the disciple learns from a teacher and then graduates to become an apostle and spread the good word. And maybe this was the model of architectural employment at one point. Think of the language we use to refer to Jose Oubrerie and Julian de la Fuente in reference to their relationship to Corbusier. They weren’t just employees; they were proteges. O how people casually refer to firms established by ex-OMA employees (REX, WORKac, BIG, MVRDV, etc.) as“Baby Rems. ”

This narrative puts far too much pressure on finding a job in architecture. It’s already a dismal affair given the volatility of professional practice and pay being what it is. Furthermore, I don’t think the teacher-disciple model even exists today in the way that it once did.

This is a long way of saying that my first job did not lead to my current career.

______项目杂志
Project Journal

点击这里查看项目杂志主页
click HERE to see the official website of Project Journal

“我们团队的目标是让项目杂志能够确切地反映出当下建筑学术圈内正在发生的值得关注的讨论。”

“Project’s editorial team makes a real effort to highlight disciplinary conversations that are happening at any given moment.”

1. 你从在读研究生的时候就创办了项目杂志，可以告诉我们多一些吗？ You started the Project Journal when you were in grad school, can you tell us more about that?

The groundwork for Project Journal was laid out by Daniel Markiewicz, Jonah Rowen, Emmett Zeifman and myself while we were third year graduate students at the Yale School of Architecture. We were, at the time, interested in the term“project” as it was used to refer to a larger set of principles that might define an architect’s body of work. It seemed like you had to have a“project” in order to be taken seriously as an architect. What was less clear was how you got one. So we invited a number of practicing architects and academics to Yale to have a series of public conversations with us to help us try to figure that out.

After we graduated, we kept at this question of what constituted a project by conducting a number of interviews with architects in New York. Throughout this whole process, we never considered that these conversations would be turned over into a publication. It wasn’t until we transcribe all of these interviews that we figured that we should do something with them. And that thing we did was Project Journal.

▼Project杂志第一期
Project Issue 1

“我们极尽编辑者的全力去理解产业风貌，因此，我们不对任何一期杂志预设主题。”

“We really try our best as editors to get a sense of the disciplinary landscape. In that effort, we make a point not to prescribe themes for any of our issues.”

2. 项目杂志现在运作得如何？你们怎么策画每一期的主题和内容？ How does Project operate now? How do you curate the theme and content for each issue?

Project was and continues to be a platform for young and emerging architects. With each issue, we really try our best as editors to get a sense of the disciplinary landscape. In that effort, we make a point not to prescribe themes for any of our issues. I think our take is that themes are a bit solipsistic. Instead, we cast a more general net to get a sense of what is happening within the discipline at any given point in time. This allows for any sort of theme to emerge organically as we see surprising and unexpected intersections between pieces which begin to suggest sets of shared sensibilities.

Project’s editorial team makes a real effort to highlight disciplinary conversations that are happening at any given moment.

In our most recent issue these conversations relate to the conceptual and computational automation of architectural labor; the aesthetics and politics of that labor; the construction of architectural images, and the politics that attend them; the display and performance of both domestic and public life, as framed by architecture; contemporary interactions – mediated by code, contracts, images, buildings – between humans and machines, machines and environments, partners in practice, architects in society.

The conversations that happen in any given issue can be quite diverse. That said, I think we often recognize overarching questions that unify each issue. In our latest issues that question might simply be how do we make things? From that questions follows a series of related questions: What do those things do? How? And who do they affect?

点击这里查看Alfie Koetter在南加州大学建筑学院官网的介绍页面
click HERE to see the introduction page of Alfie Koetter on the official website of USC Architecture

“在学术单位的泡泡之外，一些新技能的应用性值得怀疑，教学成为发展并应用这些技能很好的媒介。”

“Outside of the bubble of An academic institution, the practical application seemed questionable of these new skills, where teaching turns out to be a great medium for the development and application of these skills.”

I had my first opportunity to teach 2012 at Columbia’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. I later taught undergraduate design studios at the Yale School of Architecture and graduate studio at Columbia before moving to Los Angeles where I now teach undergraduate design studios at USC and UCLA.

When I graduated from architecture school, I realized very quickly that I had developed a very niche set of skills. This revelation wasn’t shocking as much as it was a reality check. I had spent a tremendous amount of time not just learning a set of technical proficiencies that would render me employable, but also recalibrating and refining the way I looked at things and spoke about them. Outside of the bubble of An academic institution, these new skills – apart from the technical ones – seemed to most others to be entirely eccentric and esoteric; their practical application seemed questionable. Teaching, as it turns out, is a great medium for the development and application of these skills.

I’m not so fully aware of the traditions of non-American architectural education to be able to say with confidence what would constitute a tradition of architectural education that is specifically American. I’m equally unsure that I would even be able to say what makes an American architectural education all that American either; so much has been borrowed from European models, namely the Ecole des Beaux Arts and the Bauhaus.

One thing that stands out to me, though, is the conflation of technical and intellectual training that occurs in many if not most American architecture schools. In varying degrees, students learn not only the technical requirements of building as a verb, but also the disciplinary implications of how one might talk about a building as a noun. This really sets the stage for being a master of none, so I’m not sure of itsa productive or unproductive pedagogical model, but it does seem like something noteworthy.

Emmett Zeifman and I started working together almost immediately after we graduated, first on Project Journal, and then on various design competitions. At a certain point, we had done enough work together that we could make a portfolio and call ourselves Medium Office.

If there have been any challenges for us, they have been mental, having to do with developing confidence in the way we work, while at the same time becoming more relaxed as to the question of what constitutes a project.

In the back of my head I’m frequently haunted by projects like the Vanna Venturi House or the Gwathmey Residence, these now-celebrated projects that were the architect’s first built work (Robert Venturi and Charles Gwa thmey respectively). There is great pressure not only to build, but to have what you build be as substantial as those sorts of early works. It’s a lot of unhealthy and unrealistic pressure that I think we are beginning to let go of.

“We try our best to divorce ourselves from authorship so that we can remain as objective as possible in our evalua tion of the things we produce. Automated or mechanic processes allow us to appreciate things that we would have otherwise thought very little of.”

2. 你的设计过程是什么样子？在这之中你和你的伙伴是如何做决定的？ What is your design process like? How do you make decisions during that process with your partner?

We are always trying to recalibrate our sensibilities. If we immediately like something that we’ve produced, it probably means that it’s not that good. We try our best to divorce ourselves from authorship so that we can remain as objective as possible in our evalua tion of the things we produce. To this end, a lot of our work relies on automated or mechanic processes: we set up systems that have formal consequences. The hope is that these formal consequences have unexpected or unfamiliar qualities that force us to recognize and articulate our own sensilities. At its best, this process allows us to appreciate things that we would have otherwise thought very little of.

3. 学术工作如何影响你的作品？流行文化是否也有影响？ How does academia work its way into your work and does pop culture also have a impact?

教学给了我们很多实验的空间，并且逐步朝向实践。它给了我们能够发展自己想法和美感的自由，让我们现在可以较清楚地应用在项目上。

Teaching has given us a lot of leeway to experiment and work incrementally towards a practice. It has given us the freedom to develop our own ideas and aesthetics, which we can now bring to projects with some clarity.